Summary
Eat at Mikhail's Deli until you have access to the Metroplex U. Then eat either sushi (pike sushi or acidic sushi, most likely) or caramel bars.
For body, pep pills or Omnicola are better than nothing, but what you really want is caffeine powder.
Join a gang for a few good daily food and drug items.
Detailed Advice
It takes energy to do things in Metroplexity; if you want to do more in a day, you need to get more energy. You can do so by eating food, which uses up Hunger, or taking certain drugs, which use up Body.
Hunger
Early in the game, the best things to eat are either the platters at Mikhail's Deli or the protein bars. Other decent sources are much less abundant and are not much better. If you really want to maximize your adventures globally, and not just per day, remember that you can save up quite a lot of Hunger over several days, so it might be better to not eat much until you have access to better sources of food.
Once you make it to the University, more options become available.
- Caramel bars from the University Bookstore are pretty good (2.5 energy per hunger), and easily accessible. As a rule of thumb, if you find food that is worse than caramel bars, it is probably not worth eating.
- If you buy a sushi kit from that same store and get an old fishing pole at the Waterfront (note: you must have finished the Docks Quest before this is possible), you can catch fish and then prepare them with sushi rice. The resulting food is better than most other options (and a certain skill will improve the Energy yields some more), but it takes Energy to catch fish and to craft the sushi, so it might not be worth it. If, however, you are the proud owner of an unearthly coin, you can catch a bigger type of fish, from which you can make several piece of sushi at once (a very good option, but once per day only).
- Mikhail will serve you improved platters if you tell him to keep his money at the end of the Docks quest. The first Southside panini you eat each day is pretty decent food, but the Energy yield declines rapidly if you have more than one. Forgoing the credits Mikhail offers might hurt you in other places (and might leave you too poor to purchase his upgraded food!), so be careful with this option.
Body
Body is used for all drugs, but only a few of them give Energy. The first drug you have access to, the cup of joe, has a bad yield, so you are probably better off saving up Body rather than drinking that. (The Southside blend you can get from the upgraded Mikhail's Deli is only very marginally better.) Once you hit the Docks you might find some pep pills, which are slightly better (1 Energy per Body). At the University Bookstore, Omnicola is readily available, and has the same yields.
Caffeine powder is a big improvement. It gives about 2.3 Energy per Body, but is generally only attainable once you have completed the University quest and have access to Outside the Slags. It has to be crafted using a chemistry kit, following one of two recipes:
- One can be learned from the chemistry papers sold by the University Bookstore. It involves horrible black coffee, most easily obtained from the coffee machine in Midgard Bioresearch. Filled toolboxes, dropped by Midgard workers, sometimes contain some, but the chance is low enough that you should not try to farm it that way.
- You can discover the other one by yourself, by "mixing" two pep pills, but doing so requires the Experimental Chemistry skill.
Also keep in mind that drugs that do not give energy may still be very useful. Eclipse is a prime example of that.
Gang Smuggler
If you are a member of a gang, or can find one to join, you may be able to get luxury food from a gang smuggler. (Gangs get access to a smuggler by upgrading their Hideouts, so some gangs may not have one. The ones that do have them have different policies about using the smuggler, so be sure to check with your gang leader(s) to see how things work in your gang. If you've started your own gang, more power to you!) You can use each smuggler once per day. A gang can have at most three: one in the Docks, one at Metroplex U, and one Outside the Slags.
The smugglers starts off having few connections with purveyors of luxury food. Over time, as you have them bring you luxury food, they develop better connections and can bring you more and better stuff. But even before they have built up good connections, they can still get better food than you will likely be able to get for yourself for some time. (Their connections are tracked on a per-player basis, not a per-gang basis.) Even better, it takes no Energy to use the smuggler.
Most of the food from the smuggler can be eaten right away, but keep in mind that truffles, ritzy soda, and black label chocolate give you effects you might want to save for the right time. Also, a certain skill can improve Energy yields from truffles, so if you are planning on getting it soon you might want to save your truffles until you can take advantage of it. Finally, note that the rum flask gives a potentially useful effect but does not give Energy.
A Final Note
When you're just starting out, you want to see as much of the game as you can right away, so you may not want to save Hunger and Body for later days, even if you know you will have access to more Energy-rich things to consume then. Even so, it can be counter-productive to try and use up all of your Hunger and Body each day. The Energy you spend chasing one last ancient candybar might be more than eating it gives you back. So if you wind up out of Energy with a couple of unused Hunger or Body don't worry—you'll just get more turns from them tomorrow.
The only exception is if you haven't played for a few days will be ending the day with more than 75 Energy, 30 Hunger, and/or 30 Body unspent. Energy, Hunger, and Body in excess of this will be lost at rollover. Also, your Energy can never go above 100, so be careful about gaining Energy when you're at or close to that.